Ep343: Our Unseen God.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

John says,
  Whoever does not love their brother or sister
        whom they have seen,
  cannot love God,
        whom they have not seen.
                (1 Jn 4:20)

Our invisible God presents a problem for my prayers. I had hoped for years the problem would disappear as I grew in faith and matured in relationship with God. 

But it didn’t work that way. 

One of my favorite authors on prayer, Father Thomas Green, said that when he was young, he expected his faith would be firm and settled when he grew old. 

But as he aged, he discovered that faith didn’t become easier–it attracted new difficulties. 

My experience is like his. Having been dragged–kicking and screaming–into old age, faith is still a struggle. I’d like a rich harvest of settled insights and obvious decisions, but my faith is still a garden that needs watering and weeding and protection from frost and a fence against carrot-eating rabbits and cabbage-munching deer. 

Not that my faith is of the carrots and cabbage variety. But the proofs of Christianity, so strong and convincing in my youth, are weaker now. The grand design of the universe used to reveal God’s greatness. Now it sometimes seems a muddle of incomprehensible dark matter and speed-of-light expansion, held loosely together by formulas I don’t understand.

Faith is a choice. A reasonable choice, given the other options, but still a choice. In prayer I often wait in darkness for the God I cannot see. 

Dark matter exerts an unseen force in the universe, preventing it from spinning out of control. Faith is the dark matter of my spirit, holding my life in the life of God. It is the unseen gravity that keeps my life from spinning out of control. 

As John who says,
Whoever does not love his brother
        whom he has seen,
  cannot love God,
        whom he has not seen (1 Jn 4:20)..

The strongest apologetic for God is not rational proofs of his existence, but love among his disciples. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, whom we do not see, you taught us to know you and love you by knowing and loving each other.

Jesus invited us into his circle of love, saying, “As the father has loved me, I have loved you” (Jn 15:9). And, “By this the world will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:35).

Deliver us from our obsession with rational explanations. Free us from the need to see and prove you. Liberate us from simple but false explanations of who we are and who you are.

There is a cloud of unknowing between you and us. As we face the darkness of that cloud, shine your light in our hearts. Give us grace to know you by faith, and to love others as you love us. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

I recently read an internet list of the 10 most common fears. It included arachnophobia–fear of spiders; claustrophobia–fear of enclosed spaces; and aerophobia–fear of flying. 

Though I’ve dealt with fear all my life, the list wasn’t much help. My fears were never as pointed or definable as “fear of spiders” or “fear of flying”. Mine was a spirit of fear, an assortment of nameless fears that churned my stomach and twisted my view of life. 

For years, I had no name for my problem. Then one day in college as I stepped into the winter cold for a 20-minute walk to my dorm, I realized, “This feeling that I feel so often is fear!” 

It was a relief to have a name for it. But what was I afraid of? I was afraid of people. I was afraid life would overwhelm me. That I might fail as a student, and as a human. I feared I’d slide into a pit of hopelessness and despair.   

What to do about fear, now that I had a name for it?  I read John who says:
    There is no fear in love,
      but perfect love casts out fear
      because fear has torment.
            (1 Jn 4:18)

The only perfect love I knew was God’s love. Would that be strong enough to dislodge the fear?  

I mentioned my experience to one of the elders at church, who said, “There’s another solution to fear. Look at Psalm 57.” 
    When I am afraid I will put my trust in you.
      In God, whose word I trust.
      In the Lord, whose word I praise.
    In God I put my trust,
      I will not be afraid. 
    (Ps 57:3-4)

Love and faith. Solutions to fear. But they didn’t help me overnight. They are signposts that point me in a lifelong direction, teaching me that the churning fear in my stomach is not a true assessment of danger, that the paralyzing obsessions in my mind are false guides to reality. 

I can live in an alternate universe, where God is in control, where trust replaces fear, where love wins forever. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, we have had much to fear since Adam fell. We are locked out of the garden, we pull weeds east of Eden. Violence and wars dismay us; hurricanes and wildfires damage the earth; conspiracy theories and obsessions corrupt our society. 

But we trust in you. Though you shut us out of Eden, you invite us into your family. Though angels with fiery swords block our return, you send your son to pull weeds with us and show us the way forward.  

May faith free our minds. May your love quiet our obsessions. May trust in you drive out our fears. May we walk confidently as your children. 

We trust you will have the final say, that our lives and our world and the new world to come will be rooted and grounded in love. 

As John says, “There is no fear in love” (1 Jn 4:18). 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Finish this statement with one word.  God is . . . what? What comes to mind for you? God is good?  God is holy? God is father? 

John tells us,
    Whoever does not love
                does not know God,
      because God is love (1 John 4:8). 

God is love, one of three remarkable “God is . . .” statements by John. 

The other two?

“God is spirit” and “God is light”.

The first statement “God is spirit” was delivered to the woman at the well, who had had five husbands, and was now in a sixth relationship. Jesus said to her, God is spirit. It is not where you worship that matters, but how. Worship in spirit and truth (Jn 4:24). 

I would have advised to Jesus to speak simply to the woman, tell her something she can understand, perhaps something appropriate to spiritual immaturity. Instead, Jesus gave her an advanced lesson in worship–worship God in spirit and truth. 

Did she have any inkling of what he meant? Do you know how to  worship in spirit and truth? The woman’s takeaway from her encounter with Jesus wasn’t, “At last. Now I have a credible theory of worship!” Her takeaway was, “Jesus is amazing. He knows all about me.”  

John also says “God is light” (1 Jn 1:5). Light is a metaphor for God. Maybe it points to holiness and purity, or maybe to transparency and vulnerability. Have you ever thought of God as transparent? He lets us see right through him?  

A more scary thought: I am transparent to God. His light shining through me exposes what I hide and what I highlight about myself, my truths and my falsehoods.

John’s third statement is, “God is love”. John says we should love others because God loved us first (1 Jn 4:16, 19. 21). 

These are remarkable standards for following God.
  God is spirit. Worship in spirit.
  God is light.  Walk in the light.
  God is love.   Love one another.

Let’s pray. 

Our father, as smoke from summer wildfires darkens my city, I worship you as God of light. Clear the smoke from my eyes. Help me walk in the light as you are in the light. 

We welcome your light as the spring sun that warms the soil and grows our gardens. We respect your light as a lighthouse that warns of disaster. We fear your light when it interrogates our sins. We endure your light when it comes as radiation to burn away our cancer.

O father, speak to us in love as well as light. May we be glad when you say, “Well done”. May we believe when you forgive our sins. May we receive from you the healing of memories and the transforming of relationships. 

O father, teach us to worship. Our culture worships the body. Free us from the cult of body-building and makeovers and sports and sex. 

Remind us that we are embodied spirits, and that you are pure spirit. Teach us to worship you in spirit and in truth. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep339: Test the Spirits.  

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

John tells us to test the spirits. He says,
    Don’t believe every spirit.
    Test the spirits to see if they are from God,
      because false prophets are everywhere (1 Jn 4:1). 

Yes, false prophets are everywhere. Right wing and left wing politicians, cultural warriors in church and society, media that promote inclusiveness or traditional values. Who to believe? 

One approach to John’s statement is to adopt a narrow focus. Perhaps he is speaking only about religious prophets who claim to represent God.

I prefer a broader approach. Eight billion of us are alive because God breathed into our bodies of clay. Not all of us are prophets in the narrow sense. But we are all prophets in a wider way, in that our spirits express something of God who sustains us and something of the evil that plagues us. 

John provides a test of spirits when he says,
      This is how you recognize the Spirit of God: 
          Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh 
                           is from God:
          Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus
                          isn’t from God, but is the spirit of antichrist (1 Jn 4:2-3).  

In John’s black and white view, there are only two qualities of spirit: the Spirit of God, and the spirit of antichrist. As I try to discern the spirit of people I encounter, I find it helpful to ask, Where is God at work in this spirit? Where evil is at work? 

Paul speaks about the spirit of preachers. He says some try to stir up trouble by preaching Christ out of envy, rivalry, and selfish ambition (Phil 1:15, 17). Others preach Christ with good will and love. 

Paul’s advice? Not to test the spirit of preachers or try judging their motives. He asks, “What does it matter? Here’s what is important–that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is being preached” (Phil 1:18). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, as we walk in your world, we see weeds and wheat growing together in churches, societies, and lives (Mat 13:24-30). Jesus said, Don’t try to pull all the weeds, or you’ll wreck the wheat with your work.

Like the wheat fields, our personal spirits are full of weeds and wheat. As are those who preach the gospel, engage in politics, or blog on the internet. 

Give us grace to see the facts and discern the spirits, to recognize and distrust the spirit of antichrist wherever it grows. To recognize and work with your spirit, wherever he is at work. 

May the wheat in our lives grow, and the weeds be weeded out. Bring quickly the time when you will reveal all the spirits, when you will gather the wheat into your barn, and throw the weeds into the fire. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

1 John 3 says,
    We know Jesus lives in us
            by the Spirit he gave us (v. 24). 

Is that how you know Jesus lives in you? Because you recognize his presence in your inner life?

A wise lady once said to me, “Do you believe that Jesus lives in you?”  “Yes,” I replied, “I do.” “Then shouldn’t you begin an inward journey to find and meet with him there?” she asked. That kind of blew my mind. I’d never thought of it that way.

In the town where I grew up, a retired U.S. army man umpired softball. Short, broad, and loud, he looked fierce in face mask, chest protector, and shin pads. He sometimes led singing in the church I attended. His favorite hymns? Onward Christian Soldiers, of course. And Sound the Battle Cry. The army was in his blood, and his Christian life was filled with metaphors of war.

In those years, I kept my troubles to myself. But if I had wanted to confide in someone, I wouldn’t have chosen Army Man. Partly because his spirit, his inner life, was so different from mine. And I think his Christian spirit was mixed with his warrior spirit in a way that frightened me. 

Like Army Man, we all have a mixed spirit. Paul tells us to cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit (2 Cor 7:1). In the battle against evil, we need to start by cleaning up our own spirit. 

Paul tells us to be made new in the spirit of our mind (Eph 4:23). It’s not just incorrect thinking we need to cure, but the deeper attitudes and assumptions that influence our thinking. We need a change in the spirit of our mind. 

Early in my Christian life, I thought the main problem was behavior. I just needed to get my actions right. I soon discovered that behavior management was rather difficult. Perhaps even impossible. 

So I read some Christian books that said behavior comes from the way I think. More and better Bible study, and a better program for meditating should fix my thinking. But it didn’t.

Now Paul tells me I need to clean up my spirit. What tools might help with this project? 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, once I thought the gospel was the good news of behavior management. But my behavior is still unmanaged. 

I thought I could transform my mind by meditating on your word, but my mind is still unreformed. 

And now I discover I need a new spirit. Teach me to know my spirit and your Spirit. Cleanse me from all filthiness of body and spirit. Renew me in my spirit and in the spirit of my mind.

Teach me to know that you live in me by the Spirit you have given me (1 John 3:24). 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat 5:48). 

That’s a disturbing standard. Be perfect like God? How does that work? 

John sets a similar standard when he says,
    Whoever lives in Jesus doesn’t sin.
        If you sin, you have not seen him or known him (1 John 3:6).

Some translators and interpreters try to soften these unrealistic expectations. For example, my Bible translates John as saying:
    No one who lives in Jesus keeps on sinning.
      No one who continues to sin has seen him or known him (1 John 3:6, NIV).

They change the flavor of the passage from a simple black-and-white statement. “Whoever lives in Jesus doesn’t sin” to the more waffling expression, “No one who lives in Jesus keeps on sinning”. This creates room for slackers like me to sin a bit, as long as I don’t intend to keep on sinning. So much for being perfect like God is perfect! 

There is some justification in the Greek for lightening the load like that. But here, I propose a different solution. 

Thomas Green, one of my favorite Christian authors, quotes a poet who was asked what his poem meant. He replied, “It means exactly what it says. If it meant something different, I’d have used different words.” 

Let’s give John and Jesus credit for saying exactly what they meant, even when we don’t get it. Part of what they say is that we are sinners, incapable of achieving God’s perfection. But they also also communicate compassion and salvation for sinners.

John says, “If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

I can no more reconcile sin and perfection than I can organize them in a system where everything is consistent and explainable. 

But can I receive these statements? Can I hold them in my heart, where I nurture sin and imperfection and a longing to be righteous? Yes, I can, without wavering, without cringing, without trying to explain or explain away the difficulties. 

And I come humbly, questioningly, confidently into God’s presence. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, the longer we walk with Jesus
  the more his light reveals our darkness,
  the more his purity reveals our sinfulness,
  the more his wisdom reveals our foolishness.

O father, give us grace to continue this journey. In our stumbling way, may we not abandon the goal of perfection, but bring our sins and imperfections into your light. Burn away the sin and give us each day new gifts of your righteousness until we become like Christ. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

John predicts our place in the future saying,
      We are children of God,
      and it is not yet apparent what we will be,
          but we know when Jesus appears
                we will be like him,
                      for we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2). 

I have three comments on this amazing promise about our future makeover.  

First, we don’t know what Jesus looked like 2,000 years ago, or what he looks like today, or what he will look like when we see him at the end of the age. 

We do know that after his resurrection he had an almost-normal body: he walked, and talked, and barbecued fish on the seashore, and ate it. But other things he did weren’t so normal–like beaming himself away from his friends at Emmaus, and beaming himself into a house where the disciples had locked the doors. 

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus said goodbye to the earth and sailed up to heaven and hasn’t been seen since. Unless you count the bright light that blinded Paul a sighting of Jesus. 

So I wonder: is Jesus still living in an almost-normal human body? Is his part of the Trinity confined forever to a house of flesh? 

My second comment is that Paul cautions against imagining what a resurrection body might look like. He emphasizes how different my new body will be, saying:
    The body that is sown is perishable,
          it is raised imperishable;
    it is sown in dishonor,
          it is raised in glory;
    it is sown in weakness,
          it is raised in power;
    it is sown a natural body,
          it is raised a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:42-44).       

Looking at my classic 1954 vintage body to predict what my resurrection body will be like, is like predicting an oak tree by looking at an acorn. A small brown nut, rotting on the ground, becomes a magnificent tree. What begins as squirrel food becomes an elevated playground for birds and insects. 

As the Apostle’s Creed says, I believe in the resurrection of the body.  When this body is consumed by maggots or cremated with fire, Jesus will be preparing a new life and a new body for me. 

John says Jesus is the pattern of our newness. We will be like Jesus when we see him as he is. I add, we will see him with new eyes, not with these cataract-distorted eyes that send imperfect images to a dying brain.  

My third comment is to agree with John’s statement, “Whoever has this hope purifies himself, just as Jesus is pure” (1 John 3:3). In our bodies of dust, we do daily deeds of prayer and worship and good works that prepare us for a new body and a new vision of Christ and a new life in his kingdom. Welcome to the future. 

Let’s pray. 

O Jesus, John’s promise resonates in our hearts. We want to see you and to be like you. 

Meanwhile, as Paul says,
    Outwardly we waste away,
      but inwardly we are renewed every day (2 Cor 4:16). 

O Jesus, renew our hope. Teach us to be faithful in this flesh-bound body, so that when at last we see you face to face, we may receive new life in a new body.

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

I like the stories John tells about Jesus. But when John launches into philosophy as he does in 1 John, or into descriptions of a dystopian future as he does in Revelation, he often loses me.

Listen to him in 1 John 2:3:
We know that we have come to know him
if we keep his commandments. 

How’s that again? How do we know that we know Jesus? 

The problem of how we know is one of the most complex questions in philosophy. How do we know that we know anything? But John, the fisherman-turned-evangelist, tosses off a simple answer, a simple test: Do we keep Jesus’ commands? If we do, we know that we know him.  

John doesn’t share Paul’s angst over bad behavior. Paul said, “The good I want to do, I don’t do; and the evil I abhor–that’s what I do” (Rom 7:19). John, in contrast, prescribes simple obedience: just keep Jesus’ commands. That proves we know him.

In my experience, John’s simple, black and white perspective gets lost in the convoluted grays of my life. Am I keeping Jesus’ commands? Well . . . I keep some of them, some of the time. I love my neighbors–occasionally–but more often, I just ignore them. 

I support the church and Christian causes. But do I give generously enough? 

I pray, but am I honest and fervent enough? As singer-songwriter Paul Simon said, “The awkwardness was, I don’t know whether my honestly was really honest enough” (Paul Simon, “Paul Simon Contemplates Faith, Death, and the Existence of God”, June 20, 2023, Interview with Tom Power on Q,  YouTube, 11:15-12:05. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi6NFPhsGyM&t=2s&ab). 

But as honest as I am able, my life direction is to listen to Jesus and do what he says. Perhaps that’s enough for John. 

Let’s pray. 

O Jesus, do I really know you? John says the answer is not in introspection and self-examination. The answer is evident in my behavior. 

O Jesus, help me to live like the stories John tells of you. To sit like Mary at your feet. In Martha’s kitchen, to hear you question my values. To confess with Peter, “Where else can I go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

Help me be like Thomas, who put his hand into your wounded side, and believed that the impossible was real

Help me by good works to know that I know you. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube